April
Lucy's Age: 19
It had taken a lot of work to get Venice to agree to meet me, but I'd been persistent because I didn't feel like this was just my decision.
She'd finally agreed to meet in a secluded spot in Central Park. Nothing was ever guaranteed there, but we stood at least a decent chance of being undisturbed.
I headed to the spot more than half an hour early, braving the lunchtime crowds in an effort to arrive with plenty of time to spare so that I could marshal my thoughts. I walked around a bend in the path and found that Venice was already sitting on the bench that had been my intended target.
"Wow, and I thought that I was early. How long have you been here?"
Venice shrugged. "I don't know. A few hours at least."
With someone else that statement wouldn't have been significant, but for Venice to have said it threw me for a loop. Venice had always been a barely-controlled bundle of energy. The thought of her sitting aimlessly in a park for hours was so alien that I never would have considered it before today.
We sat in silence, she with her concerns and me with mine, for several minutes before she looked at me and arched an eyebrow.
"You were the one that used who Bat-signal. What did you want to talk about?"
"Geoffrey. He came back by my apartment a few days ago and he wants to leave New York."
She nodded. "I thought he might. I worked pretty hard the last time I saw him to convince him that you cared for him and that getting out was the best option for the two of you to be happy. It's good to know that my plan worked."
Her tone didn't match her words. She didn't sound happy about the prospect of achieving the goal that we'd been working towards for months and that she'd been pursuing for years.
"You know already, don't you?"
"That Geoffrey won't be bringing me along with the two of you? Yes, I've suspected as much for weeks. For the longest time I thought that he'd want me along, but it's become apparent that he hasn't bonded with me enough to even consider the possibility. Before this we've always been able to work around the distrust that is a natural part of two vampires interacting, but not now. He's got you so he doesn't need to work around the fact that I'm a vampire."
"I'm sorry, Venice. I didn't ever mean for things to happen like this."
I got another shrug from her, this one not quite as indifferent as she meant for it to appear. "You did exactly what we discussed. You made him reconnect with his humanity, with you."
"What should I do?"
"What do you mean what should you do? You need to call him as soon as we are done talking and you need to tell him that you want to go with him."
"What about you?"
"I'm a dead woman. I took chances I shouldn't have taken in my efforts to buy Geoffrey more time. Once Geoffrey disappears Imastious will pillage my mind and he'll know that I triggered this little brushfire war that's caused so much damage to his operations. Between that and the fact that I helped, even indirectly, in getting Geoffrey out from under his thumb, Imastious won't have any choice but to kill me. That kind of disobedience has to be punished or it takes on a life of its own."
"I don't want you to die, Venice."
"I'm not so keen on the idea myself, love, but there aren't really any other options out there." She sighed and then motioned at the park, seeming to take in everything with a broad, sweeping arc. "There's a lot of stuff that I never got a chance to do, but the important thing is that Geoffrey is going to get out and at least the two of you will be happy together."
Something on my face clued her into at least some of my doubts.
"You're not seriously considering refusing him, are you?"
"I don't know, Venice. There are just so many complications to the situation. It was easier somehow before. I knew he was out of reach so it was fine for me to want him and all of the things that made it wrong just made it more forbidden."
Venice gave me a cold look. "After all of this time and you still haven't realized how amazing he is. You're such a child. Now that the shiny toy you've been pining for is in your hands, you've lost interest."
I opened my mouth to protest, to tell her that it wasn't that simple, but she talked over the top of me.
"You're going to go with Geoffrey and you're going to do it soon because if you don't, if your stupid inability to decide gets Geoffrey killed or backs him into a corner so that he ends up dumping his emotions again, then I will hunt you down and I will kill you."
It was the kind of threat that I'd always thought someone had to be really angry to deliver, but Venice wasn't angry, not really. There was a pale shadow of rage underneath the surface of her words, but mostly she just seemed tired. I got the feeling that Venice was exhausted, that she'd spent the last few months fighting against an outcome that she'd finally come to believe was inevitable.
"Would you really kill me, Venice?"
"In a heartbeat. I'm dead no matter what else happens, so this is really just about Geoffrey. If you take my sacrifice and invalidate it, then I'll kill you and never even look back. I've done much worse things than that over the last few years."
There was a hint of tears in Venice's eyes as she continued. "I haven't had the benefit of just turning off my emotions like Geoffrey does. I've felt every step in my descent into depravity. Killing you would be just one more tiny step along the way. Don't think that I'm joking here, Lucy. If you screw this up, after everything that I've put into it, then you're a dead woman."